


where the sun splits in half

by velvetcrowbars



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Author has a bad time as well, Felix has a bad time with time shenanigans, Gore, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Spoilers, Time Loop, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 08:31:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20561330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcrowbars/pseuds/velvetcrowbars
Summary: He is going to die here in Sylvain’s arms, and it will mean nothing. Somewhere else, Sylvain will choke to death on his own blood, Felix’s sword through his lung while the Tailtean plains roar around them and it will mean nothing. It will all have been for nothing.There’s a glimpse of Gronder, of Dimitri skewered like a pincushion in the mud and Felix feels Dedue’s howl of despair as if it were his own. Maybe it had been – not here, or now,But somewhere.Byleth thinks there might be a way to save everyone. Felix knows there isn't.





	where the sun splits in half

**Author's Note:**

> please for the love of god help me

Felix kills the boy he loves three times.

First when they’re fifteen and Felix throws his lance against the frozen earth – shoves his face against the ground, holds his wrists to the bowstring curve of his spine, snarling. He’s looking through Felix, past him, up at the crows beginning to circle, beginning to pick at the remains of the rebellion laid to waste at Felix’s back.

Felix buries him but Dimitri doesn’t stay dead.

So he kills him again, in a brief moment of distraction that makes fury burst like a firecracker in his blood. Dimitri’s looking through him again – all the way across the great sky-wrenching expanse of Gronder Field to where Edelgard stands cloaked in red. 

“You are in my way.”

Felix wants to choke him, just to never hear the words again. If he had the strength he’d crush his windpipe between his fingers, words banging at the back of his mouth. _Snap out of it, boar, what are you, some wild animal, don’t look at me like you don't know me, don’t leave me here, I wanted you to prove me wrong, I wanted– _

Felix grinds his teeth together.

“Fine,” he says instead, curls up his fist, raises it, and brings a Thoron spell down over Dimitri’s head.

…

For the first few years after, Felix has these dreams.

They’re not nightmares. Not nightmares like those that plague Dimitri, have him smash at the walls between their rooms, swing his fists like comets smashing bone against wood. Felix can hear the door next to his swing open, low words that can only be Dedue’s coaxing, holding, praying-

No. His dreams are nothing of the sort. 

They’re all Glenn adjusting Felix’s small grip on a sword hilt, Glenn sweeping him off his childhood bed to toss him up in their favorite game, Glenn and their father exchanging blows in the spring courtyard, his smile sharp and brave. Ingrid grinning triumphant up at his brother after finishing her bowl of soup before the rest of them. Dimitri riding on Glenn’s shoulders, Felix swatting at his feet as they bump against his head. 

_‘Recycled memories’_ may be the word, if he were to put one to it. Frames of time smudged near ruin with his practiced, dirty fingerprints, crawling from the gaping maw Felix had thrown them down when the sky went red. 

But the memories always return a little crooked.

Glenn turns his head with a half-rotted smile, his skin a burnt black patch of nothing where his teeth had been. Felix reaches for his hand to hold and comes away with Glenn’s fingers, so freshly severed they twitch as if to hold him in return. 

A younger Felix buries the pieces of his brother he collects in his dreams. He pats the dirt smooth, heaves breath after breath into his earth-caked palms, and does not say a word. 

...

“It’s a promise then, right?” A pause, a kicked rock skittering off his boot. “I won’t die without you. And you won’t die without me.”

Sylvain’s glancing at him sidelong, his gap-toothed smile a boyish shadow of what he’ll use to charm Felix and so many others with years later. Right now it’s still something special, something Felix holds onto when Sylvain nudges his ribs and nods at the girl walking past. _You look at me that way, too, I’m not imagining it, I know you like the back of my own hand. _

Felix’s smile is an unsteady imitation. He’s still learning how to master it. “I promise.”

…

It wasn’t always this way.

Felix fastens himself to Dimitri’s side as soon as he can walk, falls asleep to the rhythmic drum of his heart under his ear. _You like the Prince, then?_ his father asks – it’s a stupid and hopeful question that even then makes Felix curl in his edges a little tighter.

There’s no question, not even so much of a second thought when he puts Dimitri on a pedestal and calls it worship, this feeling he has before he knows what the feeling is. He’ll spend his whole life touching his forehead to that alter, complacent and comfortable in the idea that Dimitri will let him.

But then Dimitri comes home alone, cradling his father’s severed head like a sack of apples Ingrid had sent him to the market for, red, shiny and pearlescent.

In the end, it may be better to say Dimitri doesn’t come home at all.

…

When they’re nine, Felix slips on a mountain path and plummets six strides down before catching himself on a fallen log. But then Dimitri’s there, infuriatingly taller, lifting Felix up one-armed and clutching him close, crushing him to his heaving chest. Felix holds so tight he’s sure to break a rib. 

_Are you okay?_ Dimitri says, in his small voice.

_I think so, _he manages, before bursting into tears – snotty, ugly ones he hiccups into Dimitri’s shirt until the sun tinges orange behind them. Dimitri hoists him onto his back without even a huff of effort. When Glenn sees them coming from the front windows he rushes to corral them in, and Dimitri’s running to meet him halfway and his brother always smelled like leathered oil, the spark of steel on air, the packets of lavender their mother put in their drawers.

Glenn catches them. He always does. 

… 

Maybe, in another time, Felix lets Dimitri hold him in the aftermath of Duscur, and of the rebellion, too. Strangers’ blood seeping into their clothes, their worlds only as big as the stretch of the horizon at the kingdom’s borders. Maybe Dimitri’s fingers claw at his shoulder blades when he breaths, shudders around the once human-shaped hole inside him. Felix holds him so hard he snaps his spine and pretends the screams are from the pain instead of the blood and fire rattling around in his head. 

Maybe, in another time, Felix loses his grip on the log before it catches. Dimitri cradles his lifeless body at the bottom of the mountain, and nothing changes. 

They all go the same.

...

Death comes.

He knew that about war, about how he’s lived his life thus far. He’s survived by keeping his door unlocked, steeling himself to remain unsurprised for when Death steps over his threshold, kicks its shoes off, makes itself at home.

The impending reality is, of course, a bit different.

He takes two spiked gauntlets straight through his chest in Enbarr. The pain is less a deterrent and more an incentive, and the world is a blur when he scorches the warrior to dust in retaliation. _Serves you right_.

Sylvain catches his head a second before it cracks on the marble floor.

_Huh? When did the ceiling get so close? When did– _

Sylvain's tearing open his clothes. Felix is suddenly so unbearably cold. Sylvain’s black leather gloves and armor come away a shade darker than before.

Right. He’s been hit.

He’s been hit and Sylvain’s grabbing him all over, trying to keep them both upright, whispering something like a sacrament against the top of his head. He’s never heard Sylvain pray before. He shivers, blinks and Sylvain’s holding his face between his hands, gauntlets pricking the curve of his skull.

Felix is bleeding out in the Imperial Palace and Sylvain won’t shut up.

_it should’ve been me, why did you do that, look at me, you can’t go before I do, I never thought you’d–, I owe you, I owe you_.

He looks up at Sylvain’s face, pushing the last bit of life he has left into running his gloved fingertips in a bloody streak down his pale chin.

He almost says _I wanted to grow old with you,_ but it feels wrong when his own blood’s filling up his boots. When there would never be an old to grow into. A small, raging part of him wants to scream, thrash his way out of Sylvain’s arms and drag himself up the final steps to the throne room. He’d throw his sword like a javelin and bury it right between Edelgard’s eyes.

But his lungs are drowning in his chest, and he doesn’t trust his last sound to not be a gurgling choke.

They’d gotten so close this time.

He is going to die here in Sylvain’s arms, and it will mean nothing. Somewhere else, Sylvain will choke to death on his own blood, Felix’s sword through his lung while the Tailtean plains roar around them and it will mean nothing. It will all have been for nothing. 

There’s a glimpse of Gronder, of Dimitri skewered like a pincushion in the mud and Felix feels Dedue’s howl of despair as if it were his own. Maybe it had been – not here, or now,

But somewhere. 

He’s been here before, but–

_This time? _

Had there been one before this? How many? How many times has he thought this thought, sharpened this sword, wiped the blood from his eyes?

Glenn rots away in the ground and says nothing. From somewhere high above the Palace ceiling, a crack like lightning comes, and the world goes white.

...

He figures it together in pieces.

The little things begin to pile up first. He knows where Ingrid had left her favorite whetstone, hums along with Annette’s songs the first time he catches her singing. When he corners Bernadetta in the classroom to give her satchel back, he catches a glimpse of her in a different shade of light: her hair’s tamer, clothes torn and splotched with mud (_had it been raining? Had the sun not come out that day?_). There’s a bow, limp in her hands, scorch marks crawling up her legs in great singes of black.

It’s gone, before he has time to blink. She uses the opportunity to evade him again, dodging out the door before he has so much as a chance to stop her.

Sitting in his room later that night, he holds her stitched satchel and wonders if he’ll ever get the chance to give it back.

…

“I just don’t like sweets,” he tells Lysithea, but he knows how the cake tastes before he even takes the first bite. He’s eaten it somewhere before, but the memory refuses to materialize, to coalesce in a way that creates a coherent whole.

(_Mud soaking through their shoes, a camp ringed in laughter. She passes him a piece folded in cloth and her touch lingers over his palm. He’s holding her hand when she’s twenty-four and her ring doesn’t fit anymore, her fingers too thin and boney, and he almost breaks them when her breathing goes ragged and–) _

Since when does cake make him want to cry?

…

The dawning realization itself is slow to ripen.

It shouldn’t make sense – it _doesn’t _make sense, no matter how many times he turns it over in the dark of his room before daybreak. Yet he remembers. He _knows_ it happened, he was _there_ and–

Felix knows it for sure when Dedue fails to appear at the Great Bridge.

This is where he should be. He should be here, his armor a glint of gray cloud silver when the sun breaks through. But he never shows, and Dimitri stands alone over Ladislava’s felled body. The glow of the professor’s sword is a dim burn where it had before been a flare.

Later, he overhears Dorothea say to the quiet expanse of the greenhouse: _We killed Ferdie, professor,_ and it only gives his suspicion more weight.

Because Felix remembers – remembers Ferdinand scraping his axe across marble floor, a great upswing to bury it deep in Edelgard’s shoulder. It’s as clear as a painting, the colors bright and bloody.

Byleth’s face crumples, like a final piece clicking into place. 

What an _idiot._

...

There’s once, when he thinks Ingrid may have everything figured out.

It’s a rare in-between moment. Byleth has yet to return, and Edelgard’s portraits of her collect dust and misery in spare rooms. Ingrid corners him, rounds on him the way a mother would, because Dimitri isn’t dead but he might be soon and the shade of green in her eyes is the color of pity.

“I’m not talking about this with you.”

“I just need to know–”

“No. You don’t. You really don’t.”

"_Felix_," Ingrid's voice is soft, coaxing a wounded animal out from the hole it’s crawled to die. “Were you–? And Dimitri–?”

“No.” He bites around the word, sinks his teeth in. He wants to rip it to shreds. Flush rises in a hot flash up his neck, choking up his throat. “We never…_I_ never– It isn’t important.”

Ingrid has gone very still beside him, her gaze unmoving from his face. Felix’s flight instincts had kicked in long before, but her stare hooks into him, tethering him to the spot. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he finishes. At his hip the sword of Zoltan itches, as if pressing a brand under his clothes. “And now it never will.”

…

His father always dies.

It seems, no matter which path he takes, his father finds a way to get himself killed. He dies with Felix hating him and Glenn sitting in his invisible chair between them, never taking a side, never proving either of them right or wrong.

Usually, Felix won’t visit his grave until years later, when the war’s long since blown through and his children play in the fields that’ve grown over the bones of what Fodlan once was. Sometimes, if he’s alive, Dimitri comes with him. He locks their hands together and speaks of the latest gossip – about Dedue and Ashe’s budding courtship, Annette and Linhardt’s wedding incident, about Claude’s shocking return as the King of Almyra. The monastery is a mausoleum first, place of worship second, and Felix feels every agonizing second of it until Dimitri squeezes his hand.

It is a good timeframe – whichever one it is. He wishes he could stay a little while longer. Dimitri’s hair sweeps down to his shoulders, soft as corn silk, and even if he wears no crown here, Felix knows him as his one and only forever king.

…

He thinks about telling someone.

His list of candidates is short, limited only to those he feels comfortable holding conversation with, narrowed further by those who actually have a chance of believing him. An already short list made nigh inexistent.

Mercedes ends up finding him first.

She’s leaned up against one of the training ground’s pillars, sunlight spilling over the courtyard. The tinge of her hair is almost red when he slots the training sword to the rack, his muscles warm and nerves skittering just under his skin. When he looks at her, the scene that plays behind his eyelids is that of a Demonic Beast lunging down from a cliff side, its teeth snagging her and shaking, ripping. Annette burns her robes that night, the gore splatters too thick and pervasive to be worth salvaging.

Mercedes hands are folded in her lap, a crochet needle and knot of blue yarn pooled in her skirt. For the first time in as long as he can remember, the world feels quiet. He says nothing when he approaches and she doesn’t look up when she says in her voice like spooled lamb wool:

“Are you alright?”

And that’s all it takes: three little words. Three words for him to know. Know that, between the understanding curve of her smile, the tilt of her head just shy of pitying. Blue is the color of the sea, of her eyes, of a sadness so deep it yawns its great jaw over them like a shadow.

“You too?” He says, in the smallest voice he’s had in years.

Mercedes loops another length of yarn, and he can’t help but admire the way her fingers refuse to shake as his do.

“It’s better, to not be alone in this. Don’t you think?”

…

It’s a delicate marble of balance he and Sylvain keep rolling. The kind of war no one wins, only counts their casualties on both sides in an attempt to call it even.

Felix avoids him, when he can, gives in with little resistance when Sylvain sidles up to brush his knuckles on his hips wanting to study, or share a meal. Felix hates his smile and pretends not to see how Sylvain’s eyes linger when he thinks they’re alone.

They can only keep it up for so long.

He thinks of Sylvain with his clothes off and touches himself when the coil of hurt twists too tight. It feels like some kind of murder, the way he clutches at the idea of Sylvain’s teeth on his throat. He’s easy to imagine in the throes of passion in a way Dimitri never was.

_Is? Was? Will be? When– _

The line blurs, and then the war is over and Sylvain is pressing him down against the mattress, moving against him hot and solid and they’d _won_. He turns his head to press his tears against the pillow but Sylvain still stops at the crux of an unbearable moment of white hot heat.

_Felix? Oh, Goddess, I’m sorry, did I hurt you? _

_No. (Yes. It isn’t your fault)._

_Are you sure?_

_Yes. (Touch me again so I know this is real)._

A pause. Felix realizes this is his childhood bedroom. His feather-down bed is small and Sylvain’s breathing hard, his elbows trembling at Felix’s shoulders.

_Do you wanna stop?_

And here is where he fails, always – fails to push him out and away, fails to stop the lie from carving itself into his bones. This is where he falters, because he wants it so desperately it’s an affliction, a rot that he keeps letting fester in the garden where his heart should be. Felix grabs Sylvain by the curl of his mussed hair to pull him back in, and this is where the stars start to fall out of the sky. Felix wants to suffocate in him, wants Sylvain everywhere: under his hands, between his legs, inside him. The sun splits in half and Sylvain’s tongue is in his mouth and–

He wakes to Annette shaking his shoulder. It’s his next shift for watch. He ducks out the tent into the dark, catches Claude and the professor’s shadows through the lighted canvas next door, pouring over maps, their voices low and taut.

Felix stokes the fire, and Sylvain’s words are in his head.

_I can’t abandon Faerghus, Felix, _he’d said, head between his hands in his father’s study._ Not while there’s still a chance. _

The Great Tree Moon wanes. Tomorrow, they march onwards to Gronder Field.

...

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Felix.”

It’s all Byleth says, when he eventually asks about it. All she can seem to say. The question catches on the sharp edge of his tongue, and he’s thinking of Sylvain’s back against his chest, Dimitri’s thumb brushing over his cheekbone and Byleth–

Byleth: professor, teacher, wielder of the Creator’s Sword, divine being from a divine fell star – it doesn’t matter. He respects her more than any god that might’ve once walked the earth but the way she cuts him down without hesitation is a stab through his gut.

“I don’t want your apologies,” he says, when he finally calms enough to speak. “I want you to stop.”

Her eyes drop to the ground, the corners of her mouth pinching. He knows the look. It’s the same one she gave when Edelgard fell, when her bow pulled firm, aimed for Claude’s heart. The same look she gave him when they found Dimitri’s body under a rain of lances, clawed fingers still dragging through the mud, pointing south, as if even after joining the ranks of the dead the ghosts refused to let him rest.

“I’m sorry,” she says, for the last time. “But I don’t think I can, anymore.”

…

The third time Felix kills the boy he loves, he’s twenty-two and unsure. Unsure if he should be counting _time_, if it would even be worth it.

Thunder tumbles over their heads. He finds him in a thicket of trees, his hair damp with rain, armor dulled. There’s a crack in his breastplate that Felix contemplates shoving his hand in, tearing it open just to touch his skin one last time, just as he’d done to Felix, so many years ago.

Except – it _hasn’t_ been years, has it? It’s now, this, this moment right here when Sylvain opens his stupid mouth and says:

“Looks like we’re about to kill each other.”

Felix remembers him in the morning light, at the breakfast table, his mouth on Felix through his pants. Remembers him coated in blood, sneering, the wink he gave before collapsing from an arrow in his arm. Past him, far across the plains, Felix knows Dimitri stands, cloaked in blue and shadow.

Felix settles his feet into the mud, wraps his fingers around his sword hilt, and takes a deep breath.

“No, Sylvain. You die first.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote half of this on my phone in a country buffet parking lot
> 
> i;m sorry if you came here for a good time. follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/snipmoonn) for more good times


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